The purpose of our group is to find deeper meaning and personal relevance in works of popular literature. What makes the act of reading “sacred” is not a specific text itself, but the community of readers that uses it to explore deeper insights into ourselves and our world.

All ages and skill levels are welcome to join us, and we go at a very moderate pace.

Our current discussion is of Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Each month we focus on one of the different practices we use (briefly described below), rotating through them month by month. In addition to the practices, we also examine a chapter through the lens of a specific theme (often using the church’s monthly worship themes). To enhance the social nature of our group, meetings also include extensive personal check-ins by members. We usually close meetings by blessing a character or something else connected to the chapter we are focusing on.

Lectio Divina: Picking a short passage at random, the group moves through a four part process from a literal reading to what the text is asking of us in a deeper, allegorical sense.

Havruta: Adapted from a Jewish tradition of close, personal study of scripture with a partner, one person poses a question that they develop after reading the text. The group then explores a variety of possible responses. 

Four Reliances: A Buddhist-inspired process of arriving at a more definitive meaning of a passage chosen because it raises unresolved questions.

PaRDeS: A Jewish interpretive tradition that develops four levels of increasing sophistication from a randomly chosen passage in the text.

Florilegium: A bouquet of unique meanings bloom when each member of the group brings a small “cutting” from the chapter in the form of a very short phrase that gets combined (and recombined) with the others.

Ignatian Sacred Imagination: A short passage is chosen for its rich sensory details to become a kind of imaginative vision quest through a meditative reading.

Click here for more information on these practices.

Books that we have previously read: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin. Current book (starting in Jan 2024): The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula LeGuin 

These practices were developed from the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and the group did begin about eight years ago by emulating this podcast by reading through the entire Harry Potter series. Neither we nor the podcast endorses the personal or political views of J. K. Rowling and try to steer clear of questions of authorial intention, generally. We do consider various problems of cultural representation as they manifest themselves in the works we read.

All ages and skill levels are welcome to join us.